ABSTRACT
In the preceding chapters the evidence relating to the procreative beliefs of the Australian Aborigines has been considered at some length, the myths, the traditions, and the beliefs. We have seen what these myths and traditions are, and also something of the source from which they derive. We saw that wherever in Australia generally intercourse is in some way associated with pregnancy it is generally considered to be one of the conditions, not a cause, and sometimes a dispensable condition, of pregnancy. Intercourse, we found is customarily considered incapable of producing pregnancy. The effective cause of pregnancy, and nothing else, is the immigration into a woman of a spirit-child from some specifically known external source, such as a totem centre, an article of food, a whirlwind, and the like. The spirit-child is in origin entirely independent of its future parents. Whether or not a woman shall be entered by a spirit-child is generally considered to be dependent entirely upon the will of the spirit-child itself. Whether the belief in incarnation or in reincarnation was dominant or non-existent in any particular tribe we found to make little distinguishable difference to the observed fundamental belief that children were not the result of the congress of the sexes. Where animals are regarded as having souls they are believed to corne into being in the same way as humans do, where they are denied any spiritual qualities, as among the Tully River natives of North Queensland, they are said to be the result of intercourse, or what is more likely, simple physical reproduction. This latter view represents a special form of the doctrine of supernatural birth which, in the absence of the belief in the original transformation of animal and plant life into human beings, together with the general totemic beliefs of the Central Australian type, accounts for the birth of men in such a way that animals and plants are necessarily excluded from the process.
